Design Concept and Description
This is a viably energy-conscious school architecture with a large semipublic space. The cost of the construction was almost $40/square meter and it is keeping 28 centigrade degree inside against 36 centigarde degree to 24 centigrade degree outside in hot season for these years.
The site belongs to the area of the national art university located on the Tropic of Cancer in Taiwan. The building was designed for 2 schools of Architecture and Asian Music. The school of Asian Music is Basement floor and the school of Architecture is 1st floor. Ground floor is the court for the students to enter, meet and communicate. The client of the university has requested us to design an environmental design.
The local climate is the typical tropical one which is hot and humid almost all of the year. The site is across from the headquarters of the university and facing the main road of the campus. So it was inspired at first to design the transparent court for the optic angle and the environment, which will be a park and a stage, and the passive solar cooling methods to use the wind to cool and dehumidify. The passive solar cooling methods are the air tower to catch the wind and double envelope of the earth/green wall and double roof to induce ventilation. As a factor of the sustainable methods, it was inspired that the rain water collected by 400 square meters roof will drop into the pond of the 1st floor, move to the water tank and will be splashed on the planting of the earth walls. The pond is the roof pond of the under floor hall to cool.
Double shell is double wall and double roof for passive solar ventilation.
The air tower is the wind catcher to get the north east wind in the afternoon in summer and the thermal chimney in the morning in summer including the vertical drainpipe for the rainwater from the roof.
2 section perspectives says that the natural north-west wind in the afternoon in summer will be cooled beyond the pond to enter the openings of the tower or easily move up to go through the double roof and go out to hot outside space which is southern mountain.
The construction has started in 2004 and finished on June 9th.2008. The thermal performances in summer 2006 and in winter 2007 were measured and written in the paper for the Conference of Architectural Association of the Republic of China(Taiwan).It said that the interior temperatures of the green double wall rooms are almost 28 degree centigrade when outside temperature was between 36 degree C and 24 degree C in summer. In winter, they were almost 19 degree C while outside was between 7 degree C and 23 degree C. Double walls were considered to have been effective as the shock absorber to keep the interior temperature stable.
On 9th in the last June, the temperature of the interior hall under the pond has been 28 degree C while outside was 32 to 33 degree C.
Anyhow the thermal performance data have shown the effect to keep the inside temperature of B1 floor stable and the wind has been recognized to have entered almost at the same speed of the outside.
We consider that the passive solar cooling design for the basement floor has been enough effective but so many construction troubles not repaired yet. One of the reasons may be short of the skills and the budget, half of the standard cost. So the materials were very and cheap. The performance will be better after the repair.
p.s.: The final phot,#16, was taken on Oct. 22nd after changing the colours of the handralis and the the water exit, recognizing Taiwanese colour.